Southern African Transport Conference (SATC)

The Southern African Transport Conference (SATC) is a non-profit organisation (a Section 21 company) that has run the region's longest-standing annual transport conference since the late 1970s, renamed from the Annual Transportation Convention to SATC in 1997 at the request of the national Department of Transport. Now in its fifth decade, the conference draws several thousand transport professionals, researchers, engineers and policymakers each year and functions as the primary forum for transport research, technology transfer and capacity building in Southern Africa.

SATC funds its bursary because the conference depends on a continuing supply of skilled transport researchers and professionals to sustain the field it exists to serve — the award is aimed specifically at Master's and Doctoral students undertaking transport-related research, supporting the next generation of academics, engineers and policymakers who will present at, and eventually help run, the conference themselves. The bursary is valued at R170,000, paid tax-free directly to the recipient's university in two instalments, and is renewable annually based on satisfactory academic progress.

Because SATC is a non-profit conference body rather than an employer, no work-back or employment obligation applies; the funding is a research grant intended to strengthen the transport research pipeline broadly, not to bond recipients into a job.